Village News is 97 percent local news and, yes, it is trusted and award-winning journalism

Barry, you are saddened by the “shift to the extreme right” because of Dr. Veltmeyer’s four or five opinion pieces that ran last year? You see a problem with us running a doctor questioning the effectiveness of masks, but see no problem with us printing your pieces or dozens of John Terrell’s views? That is opinion and not news.

Do you think the left leaning letters and op-eds we print are more important than the right leaning ones? Should we ban one or the other and not allow their free speech or opinions? Should we just stop reading the opposing views of our neighbors?

Your views are important as well as John Terrell’s. Public discourse is important. We are not a right or left wing paper. That is typically decided by where the person reading is on the right-left spectrum. The political leanings of our writers are not “right-wing.”

As for national, we use much more Associated Press or other sources – about 80% of the time and very few Epoch Times pieces and that is a problem? Epoch Times has been in the forefront of reporting on many issues ahead of their mainstream media competitors.

You condescendly refer to our locally submitted pieces. And we rarely run pieces from PR firms, however we do run pieces submitted by local organizations because we believe what they are doing is very important. Some pieces we ask the organizations to submit because we believe they are important or interesting, or in the case of the camera club this week, beautiful.

Do you know we have published in the last 10 years about 75,000 local pieces for the Fallbrook/Bonsall area?

When we first started the paper, the editorial mix we decided on was 50:50 with local press releases and original staff written stories. It’s worked well giving a voice to the people who are actually accomplishing things for our town (like those relentless successes of all town events and charity fund drives you refer to).

You question our journalism, yet we have over 100 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, which includes peers in our industry from all across the country. I know you are a smart guy, but I’m not sure how many you have.

And before you hang your hat on the early FBI claims that there was no Antifa or other anti-Trump groups disguised as Trumpers, you may want to keep up on who they are currently arresting, like John Sullivan, who they couldn’t ignore any longer. The FBI used his own footage.

He claimed he was there as a journalist, however the FBI used his footage to show he was accompanying and cheering on the rioting crowd by saying “Let’s go.” This sh.t is ours!” and “Let’s burn this sh.. down.”

Sullivan was also previously arrested and charged in July 2020 over a BLM-Antifa riot where drivers in Provo were threatened and one was shot. https://deseret.com/utah/2020/7/10/21320220/organizer-of-provo-protest-arrested-accused-of-rioting-making-threats

Earlier, there were tweets from John Sulllivan’s Twitter page where he had #antifa, #BLM and was calling on followers to meet in DC and “burn it all down.”

On January 12, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono’s remarks at a press briefing regarding violence in the U.S. Capitol reported on their investigations, including the fact that while the impeachment was being rushed with no investigation or evidence presented, the FBI knew that there were people planning beforehand to attend the rally with intentions to commit violence. That means Trump’s speech given after they started breaking into the Capitol couldn't have incited their violence.

D’Antuono said, “In the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 rally, the FBI worked internally with every FBI field office to ensure they were looking for any intelligence they may have developed about potential violence during the rally on Jan. 6. We developed some intelligence that a number of individuals were planning to travel to the D.C. area with intentions to cause violence.”

This is counter to most of the mainstream news you hear.

Let’s not commit the same sins that the media did by rushing to malign the innocent Covington boys. It may be a long time before we know everything and we should wait for the facts.

In addition, before you condemn us for using a variety of sources in the 3% of the paper we use for national news, consider that your favorite left-leaning publications and nightly news have a terrible record of reporting the facts without bias. They were lapping up the baseless claims of Comey, Schiff, Strzok, and Brennan for 3 years, who were lying to the American people that there was indisputable evidence of Russia collusion.

THe DOJ investigations and reports proved they were lying. The documents released by the Senate hearings proved they were lying. Now the recent declassification of Russia probe documents prove again they were just after Trump for anything they could drum up.

Yet the mainstream media loved the narrative and rhetoric so much it kept reporting on it night after night as though it was fact; 130 leaks in the first 150 days and it was all bogus. Not only was it bogus, but the now disgraced Steele dossier is known to have been paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC. It was actually political opposition research.

Declassified documents released last week show top Justice Department official Dana J. Boente, in early 2017, overseeing the FBI’s Russia probe, testified he was briefed six times on its status and was told there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion. This is significant because during that same time the FBI expanded the probe anyway.

But the mainstream media is largely ignoring all of this. Why? Because they were complicit. Why would they report on their mistakes and failings?

Remember anyone who was reporting “alternate facts” relating to the Russia probe was a conspiracy theorist. Congressman Devan Nunez, when he released his now respected paper on the subject, was labeled a conspiracy theorist. When people talked about the Biden laptop, they were censored and it was labeled conspiracy theory, the Ukraine story – conspiracy theory. So many mainstream media stories were debunked and the twist is they actually were promoting conspiracy theories. So, don’t mind me while I take reports from journalists like Michael Yon who have covered more than 500 conflicts around the world and were actually at the Capitol that day with first-hand knowledge.

As far as the lawsuits, are you aware that not one court has seen any evidence yet? All the lawsuits were dismissed on technicalities and standing, etc. as far as I know. Actual hearings where evidence was presented to legislators was overwhelming. I doubt the election issues are over with millions of people aware of the details.

So, Barry, thanks for not canceling and we will continue to provide 97% of our paper with local award-winning and trusted journalism and submitted press releases from our hard working agencies and nonprofits and 3% national news of things that you may or may not be aware of and may find interesting.